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In the age of smart worms, however, the greatest danger comes from having an insecure high-speed Internet connection combined with a month-old copy of Windows. A firewall--a piece of software or hardware that watches your connection night and day and turns away requests from software applications that it doesn't recognize--is now as necessary for DSL or cable-modem users as luggage screening at air-ports. But a survey showed that two-thirds of high-speed connections don't have firewalls set up properly.
Until we all get firewalled, the best we can hope for is that most virus writers keep their creations in the zoo, that the Sobig.F writers of this world will turn out to be relatively benign vandals and that investigators will track down the ones who are not. Worms will always be with us, like graffiti on highway overpasses. And with luck, they will be no more annoying.